Corporate UI for Industrial Weighing and Product Inspection Blue HMI / Minebea Intec
Minebea Intec’s Blue HMI sets a benchmark in industrial UI design by combining usability, flexibility, and brand identity in a holistic system. Developed through a user-centered, requirement-driven process, the solution addresses the needs of a highly diverse, global user base across a wide range of applications: from simple weighing operations to complex product inspection systems.
Context and Usage
Blue HMI is developed for industrial applications, from automated checkweighers with integrated metal detectors to manual weighing setups, all within one unified interface. The HMI is used across diverse industrial devices from tiny displays to desktop-sized panels. While applicable to many sectors, it plays a particularly vital role in industries such as Food & Beverage, Dairy, Cosmetics, Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals, where precise measurement, process reliability, and compliance with international standards are crucial. Designing in such heterogeneous and highly regulated environments requires a clear vision, special attention to detail and a design system that is as regulatory as possible, yet modular and scalable.
User-Centered Process
The development of Blue HMI followed a user-centered process grounded in established usability engineering principles. From the start, user needs were systematically gathered through field studies, stakeholder workshops, and contextual inquiry. Early design concepts were developed as paper prototypes, then refined into wireframes and verified through user tests. This iterative process ensured that the final UI design was shaped directly by real-world usage contexts and aligned with both user expectations and technical constraints.
Global Design System
The design system builds on the company's corporate design and extends it with functional additions such as signal colors for status and interaction cues. Beyond ensuring visual consistency across products, it emphasizes clarity: the function and status of each component are immediately recognizable. The styling balances a modern visual language with long-term durability.
Clear Infographics and flexible Design
Complex data visualizations have been deliberately reduced to clear, easily interpretable elements that support quick information intake. Multi-factor trend displays are simplified into color-coded directional arrows that convey process movement at a glance. The metal detector’s detailed Lissajous diagram showing amplitude and phase, is abstracted into a pulsating dot for the user to recognize system activity and threshold violations. Classification and sorting results are presented as color-coded bars, enabling users to assess process status without cognitive overload. Each visualization is designed to retain functional meaning while maximizing clarity.
Maintaining the same functional principles across all applications ensures consistency and ease of use. The design adapts to a wide range of device types and input methods — from large touchscreens and hardkey-only interfaces to desktop systems operated with mouse and keyboard.
Holistic Approach
Product rollout in complex industrial systems demands careful integration of devices, software, and processes to ensure scalability and compatibility. This approach is designed to support a wide range of device types, such as weighing systems and inspection units, and to handle the many possible combinations in real-world use. These combinations vary by region, industry and by the specific configurations used by Minebea Intec customers in their production environments. Long-term sustainability requires resilience to technological change and evolving operational demands. Customization is guided by clear guardrails to maintain system integrity and security.
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